My Bridesmaids took me to the Cheesecake Factory (my favorite place) for a small shower and we had a blast. Our server was funny and made it a great experience. We got a special dessert just for us and a round of shots! The food is amazing there and we all had great meals. We were able to bring gifts in and overall it was a really classy place to have a Bridal Shower...we weren't very traditional and didn't do any outrageous games or anything silly like that so it was appropriate to have it in a public place :) It was more of a get-together with my Bridesmaids and family and it was kitchen-themed so I got a lot of fun kitchen gifts!

We searched the large wedding department at Michael's for a wedding party favor idea and found that they had little clear bags you could put together and place small candies in. We purchased the bags from them, along with the supplies to create a hand made label for each bag. We were able to use coupons on our order and saved about $20. They are good with coupons there. If you don't have one they usually let you sign for one. The have great ideas to start from there and we appreciated that because we are not the most "crafty" people, but we wanted our favor to be hand made and heartfelt. A perfect combination and a perfect favor!

Wedding fairs are so helpful when it comes to planning. My husband and I had a great time walking around and taking in all the knowledge. This was both of our first marriages so we had never been through any part of the planning process...and it can be very overwhelming and at times, not fun! The fair helped us gain some ground and insight, and meet a lot of great vendors. I highly recommend visiting a fair when the planning begins!

We found the most amazingly gorgeous ring online on Amazon for a GREAT price, but I was really sketchy...so we checked out the return policy before purchasing. We bought the ring from Diamond-Me and it came looking more beautiful than it did online, with a certificate of authenticity and everything. It was perfect, the ring quality, cut, color and everything was just as decribed. We got a very nice deal and a great price and I would recommend this place to anyone looking for a unique engagement ring or wedding band.

Knights had a decent selection and nice quality to their tuxes. We got a really good deal on the guys's tuxes and the matched the girls perfectly. The Groom got a free rental with all the rest of the Groomsmen rentals, which was nice that we didn't have to purchase one. The staff at Knights was great, they were helpful when we were trying to narrow down all our coat choices, shirts choices, tie choices, etc.! There were so many choices we weren't even aware of! We went to the right place.

Again, The Wedding Shoppe's basement with Bridesmaids dresses was chaotic and unorganized, it was all together overwhelming...so needless to say when we went to David's Bridal we had a great experience. We could look online or in the catalog at all the different styles, or look in the store. They had a bunch of different colors and different styles, and we had a hard time narrowing it down. I loved that they were ogranized and everything in order. The sales girls were very helpful and polite, giving everyone compliments as they tried on their dresses.

I purchased my dress at the Wedding Shoppe. I was excited to visit the store because I had hear so much about it, but I was a littl dissapointed at the way the dresses were kept. They were all crammed in the top of the store in a small corner and it was really hard to "dig" through them to look at each one. The only dresses really on display were the ones downstairs in the window...the service was excellent and everything was great, I just thought for such a nice shop they need to expand to accomodate a better dress system....David's Bridal had more organization than they did! Sales people were awesome though and that was the only problem...it took a lot longer to find "The Dress" but mission accomplished and it was beautiful!

We decided to rent a limo for the wedding party to ride around in, and get to the reception together in. So glad we did! It was one of my fondest memories of the night and Chauffeured Elegance helped make that happen. We had a great limo, clean and nice and were offered red carpet service like celebrities! The driver was funny and nice but not over the top, he made the experience great. The price was good for the time we wanted it and we would go back again for all our limo transportation needs.

A friend of mine works for World Ventures and is always raving about it, so we decided to go through her to book our Honeymoon. We had a lot of options but we choose the cruise one, and we got it for $599/person for 6 nights! An amazing deal....and we were really excited. Based on other sights we saved about $300 dollars PER person! On the carnival sight the same cruise was $899/person, and I think we ended up with a better room than they were offering. This is a great site to go through, and if you don't know anyone who is a World Ventures representative, I believe you can google World Ventures and they can set you up with someone or you can work online on your own.

This was a fun trip, but I wouldn't go again for a Honeymoon, I would choose a land destination. It tended to be a fun ship with lots of activities, but not as cozy or romantic as we had hoped. The rooms were ok, nothing too special and the food was decent. I always think cruise food could be better, but the frozen yogurt is amazing, we lived off of it! We had a great time together but wished we would have went somewhere more romantic. The itinerary was kind of go-go-go and we didn't get to relax as much as we wanted because we also wanted to get off the ship and explore-too much to do in too little time. Again, this would be perfect for just a "normal" vacation.